Syllabus Exchange

The Syllabus Exchange, in partnership with the Broadcast Education Association, gives educators a way to enhance their curriculum by sharing ideas and teaching materials. Our goal is to provide a database of course syllabi, assignments, exercises and other teaching materials that can be shared. Our focus is in the area of journalism, electronic media and communication studies. We welcome not only editorial-sequence syllabi but also those from related fields, such as advertising and public relations. We also welcome high school and other teachers.

While we review each upload for appropriate content, we don't edit or warrant the material.

Here's how it works. When you share a syllabus, assignment or other teaching material, you'll receive 100 Poynter NewsU Training Points. To download a training resource, you will need 50 points [for each resource]. To get everyone started, we are giving every registered user at Poynter's NewsU 100 points. That means you can download two resources before you start sharing.

Level

This is a rubric in progress. It has been easy to use in a print intro to news-writing class that had a couple of weeks to discuss broadcast news writing. I've included some ideas for changing it and some ideas on how to weight student work in the various areas.

A: Ready for publication or broadcast. Shows mastery of facts and elements and good understanding of the language of the image. Story is compelling, original and makes good use of audio and video components to tell it.
A-/B+: Accurate, contains all relevant material but may lack maximum precision and clarity in storytelling and some minor production errors. May have spelling or grammar errors in text, lighting and sound problems in images and footage.

What makes a piece of journalistic writing a “good” story? What constitutes “good writing”? Put a dozen people in a room and you could get a dozen different answers.
Nevertheless, for an academic course to teach about effective newswriting, and meant to help its participants become better writers, it’s worthwhile to identify a set of common standards.